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Monday, December 28, 2015

Are Things As Bad As They Say?

I am going to state right from the beginning of this post that I disagree with everything President Obama has done and the reckless way in which he has appropriated Liberty in this country in order to advance his Leftist agenda. That being said, I am sure there are those who will read what follows and call me an Obama supporter, a Rino, a tool of the "establishment", etc. But as the man said, "Facts are stubborn things." Much of the economic mayhem that has become part of the Radical Right's rhetoric is misleading at best, and un-conservative at worse. As I have stated prior on this page, conservatism is not only about what one believes, but the truthfulness in which those beliefs are presented.
If one listens to talk radio exclusively for any length of time, one would surmise that the country is in the depths of a depression unseen since the 1930s. The fact is that the economy has recovered at its slowest pace since the Great Recession of 2008-2009, but it has recovered. This is not the result of any Obama policy, but in spite of them. That is the great thing about American business and capitalism, it will always find a way to survive and thrive. Just look at the number of companies that are still around today that were founded during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
In my own life I have seen that the unemployment rate, while maybe not as good as the Obama administration has reported it is, is certainly not as bad as some on the radical Right try to convince people it is. I lost my job of 11 years last November, and even though I live in northeast Ohio where the unemployment rate is higher than much of the country, I was able to find five different jobs and have settled on one I feel is best. A luxury that those unemployed in the 1930s only dreamed of having.
I have also witnessed dozens of help wanted signs in just a ten to fifteen mile radius of my house. Evidence, however anecdotal, that still shows an improving economy. Again, in spite of President Obama, not because of him. Some of the jobs available are good paying careers. I recently had a conversation with the manager of my local Panera's and she said they are in need of managers for all the new locations they are set to open. They can not find enough people interested in rising from associate to assistant manager to manager and are now placing people directly into the management program.
Now as for the 93 million people unemployed in this country that those on the radical Right are want to repeat as proof of a depressed economy. Almost 11 million of that number are disabled Americans, another 10 million are working aged people that have retired on a union or other pension. So while there are still far too many individuals living on tax payer money, we are no where near the level of financial collapse as Greece, to which the mavens on the radical Right like to compare us. The misery index, which is arrived at by adding the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, is around 8%. A far cry from the almost 23% it was when Ronald Reagan was elected president.
As I have said some reading this will assume I am supporting Obama simply for stating the truth. And therein lies the problem with the new conservative movement, what I call the Alinsky conservatives. The truth in their hands is as malleable as it is in the hands of the Left. They have fallen under the spell of the ends justify the means, which is cause for great concern among Reagan conservatives like myself.